I had been floating face-down in the swimming pool of Matamanoa Resort in Fiji for nearly three minutes, eyes closed, breathing through a snorkel, when my freediving instructor’s voice reverberated faintly through the water. “Dobrina… Dobrina? We are done. You can get up.” The exercise was part of my free diving certification and had started as a way to activate my “mammalian dive reflex,” which is switched on the moment we put our faces in the water.
Also referred to as the Master Switch of Life, it immediately slows down the heart rate by roughly 25%, conserving oxygen, and enabling extended breath-holds. Or, as author James Nestor describes it: “[…] it turns us into efficient deep-sea-diving animals.”
Another side effect of the Master Switch? It relaxes your body and mind to a meditative state, which apparently caused me to tune out and drift to the opposite side of the pool, unintentionally ignoring my instructor calling me for at least a minute.
Normally, my brain is in a constant race against time—one where the finish line seems to move before I can cross it. But in that pool, under the glistening Fijian sun, with the ocean waves lapping below on the beach, the moment I put my head underwater and focused on the rhythmic hissing of my exhalations, my mind went completely blank.
Free diving—the ability to dive underwater on a single breath—has been practiced for thousands of years, mostly by people in coastal communities around the world as a method to gather food (or, in Japan, for pearl harvesting). In many places, it’s also a way to deepen the spiritual connection with the ocean. In South Korea, the haenyeo, women aged well into their 70s, still descend underwater without any modern-day gear, relying only on their breathhold.
But free diving is now drawing a new audience of wellness seekers in pursuit of calm, focus, and improved lung and cardiovascular health. Celebrities have taken note, too—Orlando Bloom devoted an entire episode of his Apple TV series To The Edge to free diving. As urbanites search for antidotes to data-obsessed, tech-heavy wellness routines, elemental pursuits like recreational free diving are gaining momentum. In 2023 alone, the International Association for the Development of Apnea (AIDA), one of several free diving global organizations, issued 35,000 new certifications. That figure nearly doubled in 2024.
Free diving is as much about body awareness and physicality as it is about harnessing natural instincts and learning to be completely in the present. “It’s a journey of self-discovery,” Trevor Neal, my instructor at Matamanoa, told me one breezy afternoon after practice. Humans are intimately related to the ocean, even if we don’t live in it.
Amniotic fluid and ocean water share many chemical similarities in their composition (for the scientifically inclined, one study called it the “ontogenetic recapitulation of the prebiotic seas”). In the 19th century, French physician René Quinton discovered that blood plasma and seawater are 98% the same. And we’ve all seen videos of infants swimming underwater: that’s because babies up to six months old have a natural diving reflex that causes them to hold their breath. Humans have amphibious skills—all life began in the water—and free diving training can help unlock them.
On my first day of pool training, I could barely hold my breath for 40 seconds, but after a few hours of breath-holding exercises and relaxation techniques, I easily clocked in a minute and a half underwater the next day. What really amazed me is the extent of relaxation and self-awareness my body was able to achieve—something that no meditation practice has ever managed to help me do.